Art Nerd New York’s Top Event Picks for the Week – 11/5-11/11

In a city where hundreds of interesting happenings occur each week, it can be hard to pick and choose your way to a fulfilling life. Art Nerd‘s philosophy is a combination of observation, participation, education and of course a party to create the ultimate well-rounded week. Jump ahead for Art Nerd founder Lori Zimmer’s top picks for 6sqft readers!

If you missed out on the ’90s heyday of the Tunnel nightclub, this weekend you can experience its new use as an art center and venue for the Editions/Artists Book Fair. Performa15 also comes to town, and lands in Times Square with a new Midnight Moment flick and a performance of live opera. Brookfield Place in Battery Park hosts the annual Canstruction exhibition, where food donated to City Harvest becomes innovative sculptures before becoming a hot meal. Brooklyn’s Cotton Candy Machine eeks out another great event before it closes–a mini comic book festival–while around the corner an art show proves that punk rock is not dead. Lastly, iconic photographer Sandy Skoglund recreates an accidental performance that once enlivened a Little Italy window in 1979, this time touching modernity in a Chelsea art gallery window.

Jesper Just, “Servitudes,” November Midnight Moment↑
Times Square
November 1-30, 11:57 p.m.-Midnight
Performa15, the world’s largest performance art Biennial, is the inspiration and partner with Times Square Arts for this month’s #MidnightMoment, which brings an art film to advertising screens every night of the year. Jesper Just’s film stars Mariel Hemingway’s daughter Dree in a film that explores our obsession with youth and beauty.

Canstruction↑
Brookfield Place New York, 230 Vesey Street
November 5-16, 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
Every year, Canstruction design teams transform cases of donated canned food into incredible sculptures. The best part–the food is then donated to City Harvest after the artful demonstration. Throughout the exhibition, the Institute of Culinary Education will also be giving free tastings of yummy recipes to visitors. Yay free food!

Photo by Cameron Blaylock for the Van Alen Institute

2015 Van Alen Institute Fall Festival–”Periphery” ↑
Various locations
November 5-10
The architectural and design institute celebrates fall, with a series of discussions, workshops, and presentations (often paired with cocktails) with leading writers, design professionals and performers.

Editions/Artists Book Fair↑
The Tunnel, 269 11th Avenue
November 5-8
Head to the former ’90s nightlife mecca the Tunnel for the best in contemporary prints, multiples, and artists’ books, curated by the director of Pace Prints, Jeff Bergman. Combined with talks and tours, the fair will represent cutting edge emerging and established artists for an exciting and carefully curated art fair.

Punk as Fuck↑
Royal Society of American Art – RSOAA, 400 South 2nd Street, Brooklyn
November 6, 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Just when you thought punk was dad (not a typo there), it rears its DIY head again. Tonight’s show brings together five artists inspired by the ethos of punk rock, which is not entirely common in 2015.

Comic Arts Brooklyn Presents ZINE FRIENDS↑
Cotton Candy Machine, 235 South First Street, Brooklyn
November 7, 11:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m.
Cotton Candy Machine may be closing up their Williamsburg shop soon, but they are going out with a bang. Today, come check out the work of 18 independent small press and comic book artists as part of Comic Arts Brooklyn and pick up awesome zines, books, buttons and t-shirts.

Sandy Skoglund: “Hangers” ↑
RL Window at Ryan Lee Gallery, 515 West 26th Street
November 7, 12:00-6:00 p.m.
In 1979, photographer Sandy Skoglund staged a scene in a window of a tenement building on Elizabeth Street, intended to become one of her iconic photographs. Instead, Skoglund created a disorienting domestic scene, complete with a performer who wanders in and out of the skewed familiar scene. For her current solo exhibition at Ryan Lee, Skoglund has recreated this window at the Chelsea gallery.

Arnold Schönberg’s “Erwartung” – A Performance by Robin Rhode for Times Square Arts↑
Times Square, Broadway Plaza between 42nd and 43rd Streets
November 7 and 8, 5:00 p.m.
Also in conjunction with Performa15, Robin Rhode imagines Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg’s “Erwartung (Expectation)” in the first ever live opera in Times Square. The opera is set in a moonlit forest, so Rhode reimagines “Erwartung” in the concrete jungle, amidst the bright lights and tourist-heavy traffic.